In 2009—four years after it was published—I read Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near. It is an optimistic view of the future—a future that depends on computational technology. A future of superintelligent machines. It is also a future where humans will transcend our present biological limits.
I had to read the book twice—once for the sense and once for the detail.
After that, just for my own interest, year-in, year-out, I started to track this future; that meant a weekly read through New Scientist, Wired, the excellent technology pieces in the New York Times and the Atlantic, as well as following the money via the Economist and Financial Times. I picked up any new science and tech books that came out, but it wasn’t enough for me. I felt I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.
How did we get here?
Where might we go?
I am a storyteller by trade—and I know everything we do is a fiction until it’s a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying—or of returning. The dream of life-forms, not human, but alongside the human. Other realms. Other worlds.
Continue reading: https://lithub.com/more-life-into-a-time-without-boundaries-jeanette-winterson-considers-the-bigger-picture-of-ai/
I had to read the book twice—once for the sense and once for the detail.
After that, just for my own interest, year-in, year-out, I started to track this future; that meant a weekly read through New Scientist, Wired, the excellent technology pieces in the New York Times and the Atlantic, as well as following the money via the Economist and Financial Times. I picked up any new science and tech books that came out, but it wasn’t enough for me. I felt I wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.
How did we get here?
Where might we go?
I am a storyteller by trade—and I know everything we do is a fiction until it’s a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying—or of returning. The dream of life-forms, not human, but alongside the human. Other realms. Other worlds.
Continue reading: https://lithub.com/more-life-into-a-time-without-boundaries-jeanette-winterson-considers-the-bigger-picture-of-ai/
